Tag Archives: Extradition

Russia has demanded that the United States cancel a request to extradite a Russian state executive from Italy where he was arrested last month at Washington’s request on suspicion of industrial espionage, calling it illegal. Alexander Korshunov, director for business development at Russia’s United Engine Corporation (UEC), was detained at an airport in Naples on Aug. 30 after Washington issued a warrant for his arrest.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Wednesday withdrew an extradition bill that triggered months of often violent protests so the Chinese-ruled city can move forward from a “highly vulnerable and dangerous” place and find solutions. The withdrawal still needs the approval of the Legislative Council, which is not expected to oppose Lam.

Hong Kong’s stock market soared Wednesday after local media reported that the city’s embattled leader is planning to fully withdraw a loathed extradition bill, one of the main demands of pro-democracy protesters. The Hang Seng index leapt more than three percent in afternoon trade after the South China Morning Post and HK01 both published reports that the city’s pro-Beijing chief executive Carrie Lam was planning to shelve the bill.

An extradition bill that triggered three months of unprecedented pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong will be withdrawn, the city’s leader announced Wednesday, bowing to one of the protesters’ five key demands. Millions of people have taken to Hong Kong’s streets since June in the biggest challenge to China’s rule of semi-autonomous Hong Kong since its handover from the British in 1997. After refusing for months to withdraw the bill, which aimed to allow extraditions of criminal suspects to mainland China, Lam finally conceded as she called for calm.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the extradition bill that sparked the Chinese-ruled city’s biggest crisis in decades is dead and that government work on the legislation had been a “total failure”, but critics accused her of playing with words. The bill, which would allow people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party, sparked huge and at times violent street protests and plunged the former British colony into turmoil. In mid-June, Lam responded to protests that drew hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets by suspending the bill, but that did not stop demonstrations that shut government offices and brought parts of the financial center to a standstill.

Now, after he finally overstayed his welcome, he will try to buy more time in the U.K. courts. Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder said he will fight extradition to the U.S., where he faces charges that he took part in a hacking conspiracy with ex-Army analyst Chelsea Manning to disclose classified government material. While Assange’s attorneys argued that the charges are an illegal attempt to punish a journalist for publishing information, extradition lawyers said that the best he will be able to do is delay his arrival to the U.S. through a process that will likely stretch into 2020.

Despite persistent reports over the last week that Julian Assange was soon to be expelled from the Ecuadorean embassy in London and arrested, when the moment finally arrived, with footage of him being dragged out of the building by police, it was nevertheless a stunning development.What took place, nearly seven years after Assange first sought refuge in the diplomatic mission, is however, not the end of the tale, with all of its twists and turns. It is merely the opening of a new chapter for the founder of WikiLeaks, and one which may reveal important and intriguing information, potentially with far-reaching consequences.Within hours of his arrest, Assange was found guilty at Westminster magistrates court on charges of failing to answer bail in June 2012 after he had been arrested on sexual assault charges made against him in Sweden.Those charges were subsequently dropped. But Elisabeth Massi Fritz, lawyer for one of the two women who accused Assange, announced on Thursday that âwe will do everything we can to ensure that the prosecutors resume the Swedish preliminary investigation so that Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape.âIt was, he claimed, fears over extradition to the US which caused him to refuse to go to Sweden to be questioned by prosecutors, and instead seek asylum on Ecuadorian soil. This threat, say his supporters, remains â the fear that he would be extradited to America and face a heavy sentence over Wikileaksâ hacking and dissemination of US intelligence and defence documents in 2010.The US had not hitherto admitted that it is seeking to prosecute Assange, an Australian citizen, but the US justice department had, in November, inadvertently disclosed that he had been secretly charged over the documents when lawyers erroneously included his name in court papers related to another case.The US Justice Department has now unsealed the indictment and insists that Assange faces just five years in prison if convicted.But, a source told CNN on Thursday, the DoJ expects to bring further charges against Assange, but it is not clear what those charges would be or when they would be filed.In the extradition case, which will begin in May in London, charges allege that Assange was involved in a computer hacking conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to crack Defence Department passwords and encourage Manning (then an army private and intelligence analyst called Bradley Manning) to continue to provide classified information.Manning, who was convicted by a court-martial in the hacking of the intelligence and defence material and spent seven years in prison, is currently back in jail for refusing to give evidence to a Grand Jury investigating WikiLeaks and Assange earlier this year.But it is another set of hacks involving Assange and Wikileaks and America which could prove highly problematic for Donald Trump. Assange is suspected of helping Russian interference in the presidential election by releasing information stolen from Hillary Clintonâs campaign and the Democrats and subsequently released by WikiLeaks.Last July the US Justice Department charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers, from the GRU, with hacking computers, with the indictment stating that they had been in contact with WikiLeaks.The former WikiLeaks founder has not been indicted in âRussiagateâ, but he is certain to face investigation in relation to it if he is returned to the US, with a number of committees of the House of Representatives, now Democrat-controlled, who have begun inquiries into Trump.A number of people close to Trump are said to have been in touch with Assange over the hacking of the Democrat emails, including Roger Stone, a long term and close advisor to the US president. Stone was in January arrested as part of special counsel Robert Muellerâs investigation into Russian attempts to subvert the election.Muellerâs indictment states that during the election campaign, Stone talked regularly to Trump officials about the information WikiLeaks, called âOrganisation 1â, possesses which would be damaging to Hillary Clintonâs campaign.âStone was contacted by senior Trump campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organisation … On multiple occasions, Stone told senior Trump campaign officials about material possessed by Organisation 1 and the timing of future releases.âStone had mentioned contacts with Assange and at one point instructed a friend, believed to be the conservative author Jerome Corsi, to âget toâ Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and obtain the pending WikiLeaks emails.He also allegedly told Ted Malloch, a Trump supporter in London, to see Assange. Stone later claimed, speaking to a Republican group in Florida: âI actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but thereâs no telling what the October surprise will be.âA British name has also come up in relation to Assange and the Hillary Clinton emails â that of Nigel Farage. The former Ukip leader, who regularly boasts of his closeness to Trump, visited Assange at the embassy in 2017 after returning from a trip to the US. The news of the visit broke after a member of the public saw him go into the building.Glenn Simpson, whose Washington-based investigations firm hired former MI6 officer Christopher Steele to compile a report on Trump and Russia, told a US Congressional inquiry in January that Mr Farage was a more frequent visitor to Assange than was known and that he had passed data on to Assange on âa thumb driveâ.Mr Farage had denied the claims, but refused to tell a number of news organisations what he had discussed with Assange. He said to me when I asked: âI met Julian Assange just once. I went there in a journalistic capacity because like you I wanted to find out about the emails, no real answer was forthcoming. It is nonsense to say that I had met him secretly. Do you think one of the best known faces in the country can go into the embassy without people noticing?âVladimir Putinâs spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, following Assangeâs arrest, that the WikiLeaks founderâs rights must not be violated. Earlier the Foreign Ministry in Moscow had accused Britain of âstrangling freedomâ over the affair. The footage of Assange, frail, white bearded and dishevelled being taken out of the embassy was livestreamed by Ruptly, a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, which is bankrolled by the Russian government.Assange now faces potential extradition and litigation in the cases in Sweden and the hacking of the classified intelligence and defence documents in 2010. He also faces investigation and possible litigation over the Democrat hacking in 2016.The legal process on all these cases will likely take a long time, and his lawyers have already said he plans to appeal extradition to the US. More details will emerge about the alleged sexual assaults and collusion with Chelsea Manning and we may, also, discover if Julian Assange played a part in influencing the US presidential election from his house-arrest, albeit self-imposed, in a building in West London.

Canada began extraditing Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to the United States on Friday, the latest move in a case that has roiled relations between the North American neighbors and China. The 47-year-old businesswoman was changing planes in Vancouver in December when she was detained at Washington’s request on suspicion of violating US sanctions on Iran — sparking arrests of Canadians in China that were seen as retaliatory. “Today, Department of Justice Canada officials issued an Authority to Proceed, formally commencing an extradition process in the case of Ms. Meng Wanzhou,” the government said in a statement.